“Hamilton,” the musical theater juggernaut about the birth of American democracy, is canceling plans to perform next year at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, citing President Trump’s moves to impose his ideological and cultural values on the long-cherished venue.
The musical had been slated to be part of the Kennedy Center’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. But after Mr. Trump ousted the Democratic members from the center’s once-bipartisan board, became its chairman and replaced its president, “Hamilton” decided not to come.
“This latest action by Trump means it’s not the Kennedy Center as we knew it,” the show’s creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, said in a joint interview on Wednesday with its lead producer, Jeffrey Seller. “The Kennedy Center was not created in this spirit, and we’re not going to be a part of it while it is the Trump Kennedy Center. We’re just not going to be part of it.”
Mr. Seller said the “Hamilton” team believed that Mr. Trump “took away our national arts center for all of us.”
“It became untenable for us to participate in an organization that had become so deeply politicized,” he said. “The Kennedy Center is for all of us, and it pains me deeply that they took it over and changed that. They said it’s not for all of us. It’s just for Donald Trump and his crowd. So we made a decision we can’t do it.”
Richard Grenell, the Kennedy Center’s new president, called the cancellation “a publicity stunt that will backfire” in a post on social media. He accused Mr. Miranda of being “intolerant of people who don’t agree with him politically” and said that it was clear that he and Mr. Seller “don’t want Republicans going to their shows.”
“Americans see you, Lin,” he wrote.
The decision takes “Hamilton,” the hugely popular retelling of the nation’s founding, out of the Kennedy Center’s plans to celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence — which President Trump has made a priority of commemorating. Although the Kennedy Center had last year announced that “Hamilton” would be staged there in 2026 as part of those celebrations, it had not yet put tickets on sale, and no contract had been signed. Mr. Miranda and Mr. Seller said the show would soon announce another venue in the Washington area so those hoping to see the show in that region would still have an opportunity to do so.
The cancellation comes at a time of transformation for the Kennedy Center. Mr. Trump has said he has a “vision for a Golden Age in arts and culture,” but has not specified what that might look like. Mr. Grenell has promised “a big, huge celebration of the birth of Christ at Christmas.” (The Kennedy Center has regularly presented Christmas-themed festivities.)
The venue’s administrators are now figuring out what kind of art they are willing to present, while artists are deciding whether they are still willing to perform there and some ticket buyers are weighing whether they plan to continue attending.
Since Mr. Trump’s moves to take control of the Kennedy Center, a handful of artists have canceled shows there, including the musician Rhiannon Giddens and the actress Issa Rae. The soprano Renée Fleming and the singer-songwriter Ben Folds stepped down from advisory positions with the center and its affiliated organizations.
“Hamilton,” a biomusical about America’s first treasury secretary, was the biggest Broadway hit in years. It opened on Broadway in 2015 and won both the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award for best musical. On Broadway it has grossed more than $1 billion and has been seen by nearly five million people. There have been multiple other productions over the last decade; it is currently running in New York and London and is touring in North America and Britain. And a live-capture version of the show is available to stream on Disney+.
Mr. Miranda is no stranger to the Kennedy Center. In 2018, during the first Trump Administration, he and other members of the “Hamilton” creative team were among the Kennedy Center honorees. “Hamilton” has been staged twice previously at the Kennedy Center, playing there for 14 weeks in 2018, when Mr. Trump was president, and for 10 weeks in 2022, when Joseph R. Biden Jr. was president.
Mr. Miranda is also no stranger to dust-ups with the Trump Administration. In 2016, shortly after Mr. Trump was elected to the presidency for the first time, the “Hamilton” cast delivered a curtain call appeal to Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who was in the Broadway audience, asking that the Trump administration “uphold our American values” and “work on behalf of all of us.”
Mr. Trump lashed out, demanding an apology, and saying he had heard that “Hamilton” was “highly overrated.”
The show had a better relationship with the Obama administration — Mr. Miranda performed a song from what would become “Hamilton” at the White House in 2009, and in 2016 members of the cast performed at the White House. On that occasion, the first lady Michelle Obama called the musical “the best piece of art in any form that I have ever seen in my life.”
Also on Wednesday, Melissa Errico, a well-regarded musical theater performer, said that her World War I-themed concert, “The Story of a Rose,” which had been scheduled to run at the Kennedy Center in May, would relocate to a venue in Northern Virginia. Errico and the show’s producer, Daniel Dayton, said the decision had been made because of concerns over seating capacity. But Ms. Errico also said: “I’m glad at how it turned out. I wanted to do a show that everyone could attend — left, right and center.”
Most of this season’s theater programming appears to be intact. Greg Nobile, a lead producer of a Tony-winning revival of “Parade,” a musical about an antisemitic lynching in the early-20th-century American South, said in an interview before the “Hamilton” cancellation that he continued to expect the “Parade” tour to perform at the Kennedy Center this summer.
But next season’s programming could be at risk. Meredith Blair, the president and chief executive of the Booking Group, which arranges tours for Broadway shows, said several shows that had planned to perform at the Kennedy Center next season but had not yet publicly announced those plans are now quietly canceling.
Discussion about this post